Meesho has witnessed strong growth due to the pandemic, with its monthly orders growing 6X since March 2020. The app has helped 13 million women entrepreneurs to sell products from home.
Meesho was the first social trade unicorn globally to become India in April after raising SoftBank's $300 million in funding.
The new financial contribution now makes the company $ 2.1 billion worth of the coveted unicorn club.
The Softbank Vision Fund 2 Social Trade Platform, Meesho, raised a new $300 million fund. Meesho's valuation is 2,1 billion dollars with this investment. Existing investors such as Prosus Ventures, Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway, and Knollwood Investment participated in the round.
It is number one among Google Play Store India's classifications with usual suspects such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Facebook. Over 50 million Android-based downloads have passed through Meesho, which stands for 'Meri Shop.'
In the last year, the Facebook-backed startup has grown dramatically as the pandemic forced more people to stay and order online at home. In March 2021, it passed 20 million orders a month, up over 6X in March 2020 from 3 million.
"Meesho now has 13M+ entrepreneurs, selling products from 100K+ suppliers to approximately 4,800+ cities/towns to ~50M consumers (3 percent of India's population). Over the last 12 months, our monthly contractors have grown 10x."
The project aims to simplify e-commerce in India and help them generate better income for 100 million small firms (including individual homeowners).
Following its last fundraising in April, Bengaluru's estimate jumped from $700 million in 2019 to $2.1 billion in 2021.
Visit Autrey, co-founder and CEO of Meesho commented on the fund-raising in a press release shared by the company, "We are aiming to broaden our vision, from helping women entrepreneurs to create Meesho, a single ecosystem for online success for all the small enterprises in India. Over the last year, small businesses and entrepreneurs have seen tremendous growth to move their companies into the Internet. With our new vision, we can launch, achieve and lead 100 million small businesses online with their partner Meesho."
"Overall, SoftBank has always been excited about founders who provide unique solutions for the local market," says Munish Varma, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. Meesho created a platform for many small business owners to sell to the next cohort of internet users through the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning. We hope to be part of this journey."
It stated that it has supplied over 4,800 towns from 100,000 registered suppliers to over 26,000 pin codes and generated more than 500 crore income for individual businesses. It served customers in more than 4,500 Tier II towns.
"We have been tracking Meesho closely for the past 18 months and were impressed by its growth, daily commitment metrical measures, the focus on the unit economics, and the ability to build a strong team. the We believe that Meesho offers SMEs and social resellers an efficient platform onboard the Indian e-commerce revolution to support and provide consumers with a personalized experience." Sumer Juneja, the partner of Soft Bank Investment Advisors, said.
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